1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述包含参考文献）

2. literature review

2.1 theoretical issues

2.1.1 listening comprehension

the importance of listening has led to abundant studies on the nature of listening comprehension. traditionally, listening and reading are considered as sharing a number of similarities. however, compared to reading, listening is less studied. as weir(1993) claimed, ” much of the current thinking on the nature of listening comprehension is based on the earlier work of reading comprehension.”

in recent years, with the development of cognitive theories, people begin to gain a better understanding of the nature of listening comprehension. in contrast with behaviorists, cognitive researchers hold that listening comprehension involves more than simply perceiving aural stimuli, and listeners are considered as active rather than passive. more specifically, listening comprehension is now considered as an active process, in which listeners focus on selected aspects of aural input, construct meaning from passages, and relate what they hear to existing knowledge(o#8217;malley amp; chamot,1990).

2. 研究的基本内容、问题解决措施及方案

3. methodology

3.1 research questions

the present study will aim to investigate the effects of different formats of question preview and language proficiency on efl learners#8217; listening comprehension. three formats of question preview under investigation in this study will be 1. including full question preview(fqp) in which the subjects will see both the stems and answer options and then listen to the listening material and chose the correct answer. 2. answer option preview (aop) which will allow the participants to preview the answer options (and not the question stems) and then answer the questions. 3. question stem preview (qsp) which will it possible for the examinees to look at the question stems but not the answer options before listening. after listening to the materials, the participants will see the options and choose the correct answer. thus, the research questions will be addressed as followings:

1. is there any effect of different ways of question preview w on china#8217;s efl learners#8217; listening comprehension?